All the Way Down
by thestubb
Summary: Charlie tries to come to terms with Liam's death. It's not going so well. Post QB. 'Surrender' ending complaint, all spoilers apply.


**I'm in love with Charlie, and I'm in love with the Burkes, and I'm in love with Fiona, and there is a horrific lack of fanfic for any of the above. So here I am. Have some angst.**

* * *

The first night after the fracture is saved and the world goes back to normal and Liam dies, Charlie doesn't sleep.

He stays up all night in the big chair in his living room in his shitty apartment and ignores Fiona's messages.

* * *

The second night he doesn't sleep either.

It's not that he doesn't want to, exactly. It's more that the second he closes his eyes, he sees Liam's face looking at him—angry and fearful and desperate—and they pop open again. He still sits in that shitty chair in that shitty living room in his shitty apartment and curls up in a blanket and stares at wall. His eyes burn, and his head aches, and his heart is a numb lump in his chest.

At six in the morning, his cell phone rings again. His eyes hurt when he looks at the caller id, but he registers that it's Fiona. He inhales, then picks it up. With a swipe, the green circle flies across the scene, and he croaks, "What."

"Charlie? What the fuck?" Fiona's voice is irritated, but underneath he senses a level of franticism he's not sure anyone has shown him before. "Why haven't you answered my calls? Where are you? I knocked on your door, but no one answered."

"I know," he says, but he's tired, so tired, and too awake to care.

"Charlie?" she says, and her voice changes from high-pitched to concerned. "Are you okay?"

 _Liam's dead and I killed him,_ he wants to say. _I killed a man for a corrupt company he's dead he's dead it's my fault._ "No," he simply rasps through the lump in this throat.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

 _Liam's dead, Liam's dead, Liam's dead, and I killed him._

He hangs up.

* * *

Charlie manages to get up that day. He showers, and washes days' worth of grime off himself. He changes his shirt and his underwear and combs his hair. He makes the biggest cup of coffee he's ever seen, but leaves it on the counter because his throat is too dry to drink anything.

He drives to Monarch, albeit very carefully. He doesn't go inside; he assumes they know he hasn't been to work in two days. Not that they're not cleaning up a shit storm already, and he could probably walk in and get his job back within seconds. A little careful kissing-up here, some reminders, maybe a touch of blackmail.

Suddenly Liam is in front of him on the floor, his blood smeared across the tile like finger paints, and his gag reflex seizes.

He drives away faster than he's ever driven before, and is thankful there are no cops around to catch him. They'd probably send him to the mental hospital anyways.

* * *

Charlie sleeps that night.

He dreams of a room lit with yellow lights and snapping with tension; he dreams of gunshots and screams; he dreams of dissolving faces and choking; he dreams of blood smeared on the floor; he dreams of a corpse named Liam Burke.

He wakes up screaming and vomits until morning.

* * *

Fiona calls him again the next day. He's almost too exhausted to pick up, but he does, croaking out a greeting.

"What's going on?" she asks. "Why don't you pick up my calls?"

How can he explain? How can he tell her what tortures him every hour of the day? Every minute? Every second?

"I killed him, Fiona," he breathes, and the world stops like one of those stutters. Except that the stutter only involves him and his heart and the blood in his veins, and the rest of the world will keep turning.

Fiona goes still, and only a very careful exhale from her side of the phone lets him know she's still on the line. "Oh, Charlie," she says, very quietly. "You know you didn't—"

"I'm just really tired," he whispers, and his finger presses the red square to end their call.

Red like the blood on Charlie's hands, on the CFR room floor, like Liam's blood.

He vomits again.

* * *

He avoids the door like the plague; even when the mailman knocks, when the salesman selling roof cleaning knocks, when Fiona knocks (bangs) on the door and tells him to let her in, for fuck's sake. His neighbors don't knock because hell, do they even know he exists? He's never spoken to them, never greeted him. He's hardly even home.

So he isolates himself some more. He's always kept himself locked away from the world; from the bullying when he was younger, to the early college in his preteens, to the coding and programming in the dark for days on end in his teens, to his job as glorified IT at Monarch. He's never had a problem being alone, so it's easy to sit on his shitty couch in the dark in his blanket in his shitty apartment and stare at his shitty wall.

He tries not to think about the fact that, if things had gone differently, they might have been friends.

* * *

Has he ever really had any friends?

* * *

He wakes up sweating and screaming from a dream he can't remember.

* * *

Fiona knocks on the door again the next morning, jarring him from the waking doze he's been lulled into by sheer lack of actual sleep (how many hours has it been?). He jolts and nearly falls onto the floor, but he pulls the blanket over his head and closes his eyes and prays she'll leave him alone.

"Charlie Wincott, I am getting in this house if I have to break down a goddamn window. Let me in," she threatens, her voice muffled and angry, and he supposes if he doesn't want to have to replace his window he's going to have to let her in.

He stumbles his feet and shuffles to the doorway, his hand hovering over the lock. Should he answer? Should he tell her to leave him alone?

Should he kill himself?

The thought is so random and awful and appealing that it shocks him into twisting the lock. One twist, one slide, one 8-digit password, one fingerprint, one doorknob. He twists the knob open and in swings the door, revealing a frazzled, worried Fiona. He blinks against the hard sunlight, his eyes burning, and regrets his decision.

"Oh, Charlie," she breaths, taking in his unwashed hair, unshaved face, the bags stretching far below his eyes, the red of their whites.

He looks down, half due to the torturing sun, half due to the fact he's too ashamed to look her in her perfect eyes. "Hey," he mumbles.

She leads him inside, paying no attention to the piles that have steadily accumulated in his normal anally pristine apartment, and makes herself at home. Within minutes, she's forced him into the shower, set out a new set of clothes, and made him lunch.

He sits at the table and stares at the food that mocks him because he can still eat and Liam can't, and wonders how a woman so kind can take care of a coward like him.

"It's not your fault, Charlie," she says, placing a hand over his.

His eyes are too dry to cry.

* * *

He dreams about a room lit up by bright sparks. The air snaps with tension, and his hands are weighted with too many pounds for him to lift. There's a keyboard— _press the keys!_ —and he hears Liam's voice entering the room, pulling a frazzled, blonde, beautiful woman behind him. Liam holds her hand with his bad hand and has his gun in the other, and Charlie knows what's coming.

He's right, because here comes that bastard Martin Hatch, and he's wrong, because instead of Liam's frightened countenance looking at Martin, Hatch hands Charlie the pistol he holds.

Charlie tries to drop it, tries to throw it at the farthest wall—"I don't want this!"—but his hands move of their own accord. They point the gun at Liam's face, and he expects Liam to say "You little fuck!" but instead, he just stares. His eyes are tired. His face is drained and bloody, and the hand that holds Elizabeth's shakes. There's this weird wheezing noise coming from his chest, labored and late.

Charlie begs for help, begs him to take the gun, swears and pleads for someone to take it from him. But even though his hands tremble like leaves in a gale, they manage to shoot Liam clean in the center of his forehead.

Liam drops like a rock, and Elizabeth screams, louder and louder until suddenly Fiona is shaking him awake.

"Wake up, Charlie, Charlie wake up, it's just a dream!"

Charlie fights up and out of his blanket, heaving and terrified and guilty, and all he can do is try to catch his breath. His eyes are wide, and the world is too big, and he needs something to hold onto. His darting gaze catches her hand, but he doesn't deserve to hold it, doesn't deserve any comfort because he brought this on himself.

Fiona sees the way he looks at her hand and immediately understands. So even though he won't take her hand, she takes his, and pulls him so he's leaning into her. Somehow, they shift around to the point that he's curled in a ball, lying on the couch, and his head is situated in her lap. Her thighs are soft, he thinks vaguely, and her fingers curl in his slightly damp hair.

"It's not your fault, Charlie," she says for the sixth-thousandth time, and, for the sixth-thousandth time, he doesn't believe her.

* * *

He doesn't sleep anymore.

* * *

Fiona keeps coming over to check on him. Sometimes he tries to act like he's okay; smiles briefly, says more than just a few words, showers of his own volition. Sometimes he just stares off into the distance and stays silent. It depends on how many trips he's taken headfirst into the toilet.

At first, she's suspicious that he's drinking to help quell the awful emptiness threatening to consume him. She doesn't say it in as many words, but he catches the way she freezes when his cupboard of beer is empty—then relaxes when she sees he's just shoved it to the back of his pantry. It makes him feel better when she turns to him and flashes him a smile and ruffles his hair, promising she'll be back the next day with pizza.

It's when she closes the door and leaves him alone that he sets his pistol on the table and stares it down, fingers both itching and terrified of blowing a bullet through his brain.

At least he's not an alcoholic.

* * *

He's just really tired.

The few hours of actual sleep he manages to snatch here and there, combined with the dozing he sometimes falls into, isn't enough to sustain him. His brain rattles off all the ill-side effects of not enough sleep, the leftover remnants of an education left in the dust for greater, more lucrative things. And yet, for all his brain's ramblings, his eyes won't obey, and his subconscious remains rebellious.

So he stares at the stupid gun on the table in front of him all night. It's not like he wanted it. His dad gave it to him when he started working at Monarch, like it was some kind of man's right to know how to shoot a gun and defend himself. Charlie used to enjoy shooting, actually; his dad would take him out for target practice sometimes. Now, he thinks about Hatch's finger pulling the trigger, and the only person he can imagine using it on is himself.

He jerks awake from a nightmare again; this time the blood from Liam's chest sprays onto his face and lands on his tongue. He leans over the couch and dry heaves, unable to even muster bile to get the taste of copper off his tongue. His hands are shaking, his head is spinning, he can't breathe, can't breathe—

The accusations pound his head, an endless ocean surf that will beat him into fine grains of sand. His hands clutch at his temple and he bends over, shivering and trembling. "No, no, no," he whimpers, screwing his eyes shut. You killed him—you did this—you are nothing—you did this, you did this—

"I didn't want to," he tells the air, and the air tells him he _did_. Does he agree? Doesn't he? He doesn't know—he can't breathe—

Before he knows it, he's grabbing the gun and slamming the tip against his head. _Just do it!_ he screams at himself, and his hands are shaking and he wants to end this so bad, just end the guilt and shame and disgust. But he's so scared—that's all he'll ever be is scared, which is why the world was ending, which is why Emily's alone, which is why Liam's dead.

He's so close—he can't do it—

Suddenly the door opens and Fiona walks in.

Charlie is so startled his finger closes on the trigger.

* * *

"Charlie, _what the fuck_?!" she screams, dropping the groceries in her hand, brown paper bags spilling over his floor.

 _The safety is on, the safety is on_ , he thinks, and the magnitude of what just happened falls on him like a tidal wave. He stutters, his mouth moving and unable to form coherent words, and the gun falls from his hands that shake like an old man's. Fiona crosses to the gun, unloads it, and tosses it across the room like it burns her fingers.

Charlie heaves for breath, his hands fluttering over his chest, his face, his head. He gets up and stumbles away from Fiona, suddenly so scared and shamed he can't even be next to her. He staggers in a circle, the world turning black around the corners of his vision.

Coward! His brain screams. Coward! Lily-livered, yellow-bellied coward!  
"I-I-I—" he stammers, and his throat is so clogged with something he can't get the words out. He clutches at his temples and hits the wall, his legs giving out. He slides down to the floor and wishes he could cry, wishes he could get the capsizing his chest out. But he can't, because he's Charlie, and he's alive even though he killed a man.

Fiona carefully crouches in front of him, her own hands trembling as she smooths back the hair on his face. He flicks his eyes up to meet hers, but she's fucking crying and he can't take that, so he draws his knees up to his chest and buries his face in his pants and wants to die.

"Oh, Charlie," she breaths, and rests her palm on his head. A shudder runs through him, and she brushes her thumb across his skin.

"I don't know what to do," he gasps out, and Fiona sighs.

"I know."

* * *

Needless to say, she doesn't leave him alone much after that. When she does, it's for the bare minimum; only so she can put in the necessary hours at work before rushing back to Charlie's house. Sometimes she tries to talk about what happened, but more than anything it seems she feels guilty for not seeing the signs better.

Charlie feels guilty she saw them at all.

* * *

He dreams, one day, which is not abnormal. What is abnormal, however, is that he doesn't dream of Liam's gaping, lifeless face, but Emily's—scared and griefstricken and determined. She shoots him in the face.

He wakes up and knows what he has to do.

* * *

Fiona leaves for her customary few hours, shooting him a smile and making some arbitrary promise about a movie or whatever for later in the evening. He tells her thanks, and her warm fingers brush his, and he feels his heart thump.

Then she's gone, and he jumps in the shower as fast as he can. Now that he knows what he needs to do, it gives him a purpose, a reason to move, something to think about besides death.

After a quick, easy search of an address database online, he jumps in his car and guns it. It isn't smart, isn't intelligent, isn't safe. He's putting himself and every other driver on the road in danger, but he doesn't care.

It's twenty minutes before he pulls up to Liam's old house—he hadn't realized he lived so close. He parks along the curb and scrubs a hand over his tired, dry eyes before inhaling deeply and exiting. He falters before knocking on the wooden door—oh god, why is he here—she's going to hate him—

 _Isn't that the point?_ he thinks, and knocks.

* * *

It's silent for a moment, and he's about to turn away in a rush of sinking stomach and disappointment, when the lock sounds. The door knob turns, and suddenly he's looking straight into the eyes of his victim's wife.

If anything, she looks as tired as he does, which is crazy. The bags under her eyes are huge, her face pale and wan. Now that he's closer and she's wearing a tighter shirt, he can see the soft swell of her stomach, the life inside steadily growing. Her face softens.

"Hi."

"…I'm Charlie," he manages, and she manages the smallest of smiles.

"I remember you."

The silence is stifling; what does he say, how does he do this? He's sure he looks like a sight; rumpled, exhausted, frantic, messed.

"Can I help you with something?"

Charlie takes a deep breath and says, "I need to tell you something about Liam."

She freezes, and her face falls, and she subconsciously pulls the door a little more shut. She swallows, hard, like there's a rock in her throat to match the one in his. "Come in."

* * *

The house is clean—how is it so clean? How can she think about cleaning? If he is so debilitated, how can she even walk? How does she do it? She sits him down in the living room and gets them some water, her feet padding softly back and forth between the rooms peacefully, even though the tension in the air is so thick you could cut it. She hands him his water, sits on the opposite end of him, and sips expectantly.

His throat closes up—his mind goes blank—just tell her!—"I killed Liam," he blurts out.

Emily chokes, cupping her hand over her chin to catch the water dribbling off her chin. She clears her throat, drying off her hand before speaking. "I—you didn't kill Liam," she says softly.

"I did—" Charlie says, but she cuts him off.

"I was there," she says, and her voice is quiet but as hard as the edge of a razor. "I saw what happened. That—that man shot him, you didn't. You tried to help."

Charlie suddenly has to stand up, agitation sending his foot tapping so hard it might fall off. He drags in a ragged breath and runs a hand through his hair. "No, no, you don't understand, it's my fault—"'

She lays a hand on his arm; cool and soft and flawless. "Sit down," she tells him. "Tell me about it."

* * *

So he does, from start to finish. He tells her all the shit he pulled, the betrayal, the way he literally left her husband for death in a puddle of his own blood on the concrete. She's very still the entire time, watching him rant and gesticulate and pace the room. He spills it out in an ugly mess, until he winds up at the end, on his knees and blubbering for his life before Liam, literally saying anything to stay alive.

He turns back to Emily, tears spilling down her cheeks and her mouth slightly gaped. Her water sits off to the side in a puddle of condensation— _puddle of blood, puddle of blood_ —forgotten and alone. It's quiet, so quiet, so he says harshly, " _That's_ how I killed Liam."

A pin could drop and sound like an earthquake. He waits for her answer, but she says nothing; he wants her to scream, but she is silent. Finally, she palms her cheeks and draws in a shuddering breath. She looks up at the ceiling, gathering her thoughts, and Charlie is peaceful in the knowledge that she is going to hate him.

* * *

Except…she doesn't.

"I…don't know exactly what happened that night," she says carefully. "Liam explained some to me, but…I still don't know." Her eyes are swimming, and she swipes away a tear that slips down her cheekbone. "But I do know we all made mistakes that night. We all did. You did, Liam did…hell, I did."

Charlie staggers backwards suddenly, because this is not what is supposed to be happening. She's supposed to tell him he's right, that he's a killer and she _blames_ him, not that he's okay.

Emily looks tired, so tired. "There are so many things I would have done differently if I could. But I can't. And neither can you."

Charlie collapses to the floor and stares and wonders if he's dead already.

"So let's stop, okay? Please?" Emily looks a little desperate, her fingers folded together as if in silent supplication for an end to her suffering. He's the reason for it—can't she just blame him already?

"I killed Liam," he breathes.

"We all killed Liam," she answers.

* * *

Charlie feels something wet drop onto his hand. He looks down, and suddenly there's more. He swipes a hand over his cheeks, and realizes he's crying. He tries to stop, but his chest suddenly buckles, and more tears come, and all of a sudden he's burying his face in his hands and sobbing. They hurt; great, gasping sucks of air stained with the tears he should've cried two weeks ago. He could say he _allowed_ himself to cry and let it all out, but he'd be lying. The truth is, he can't do anything _but_ cry; weep and weep and weep.

He finds himself rocking forward, bent over his knees with his nose practically smashed into the carpet. He hides behind his hands and tries to stop, but he feels those cool, slender fingers softly thread their way through his hair and feels the shame clench his chest.

"I'm so sorry," he sobs through his fingers, saliva flicking through the cracks. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, _I'm so sorry_."

She hushes him through her front teeth, moving her fingers carefully through his hair like she's petting a stray dog. "I forgive you. I forgive you."

Charlie cries until he can't cry anymore, a weak, huddled, melting little mass draining into the carpet. His shoulders tremble and his hands are shaking when he finally stops, wiping a hand across his face embarrassedly.

Emily smiles and cups his cheek. "Enough, Charlie."

"Okay." His words hardly make an imprint on the air, but he means it.

* * *

He doesn't leave for a while, curled up on the floor. The living room is warm; what he once thought was stifling is now comforting, wrapped around him like a familiar blanket. His eyes are puffy and hideously red, his nose swollen and bright pink, but a weight has been lifted off his chest. He can finally breathe again.

"Will you tell me about him?"

Charlie snaps out of his temporary lull. "Huh?"

Emily stares out the window, her face tired. Wisps of hair frame her face, a golden halo in the waning afternoon light. She's pulled a crocheted afghan around her shoulders, one side slipping off. "I…loved Liam. More than anyone else. But apparently I didn't know him as well as I should have," she says. "Tell me about him."

So, after a moment's hesitation, he does. He tells her about the terse security man, the stalking figure, the specter of grim justice. And Liam _was_ just; he did questionable things, of course, but he held tight to the sense of right and wrong in his job—maybe that was the only thing keeping him sane. His punishments were fair, and he did his job well. He tells her about late night excursions, and dedicated chasing, and protection when an active shooter threatened the company (Liam took him out before anyone was lost). He tells her about that one time a child was caught in the crossfire and Liam was fucked up for three whole days. He tells her about Liam patting him on the back when Charlie's mom died and he threw a tablet at the wall. And he tells her about that one day where Liam was completely distracted, staring off into the distance with a glazed look in his eyes; Charlie tracked his cell phone and watched him sit in a popular bar for four and a half hours straight. In the same spot.

He tells her bad, he tells her good. He tells her everything he knows. Which, considering Charlie's position, is a decent amount; they worked together semi-closely.

The only thing is, they were both such terrible people they were never friends.

By the time he finishes, the sun outside is all but gone, the sky once lit up a rosy orange fading to dark. Emily's eyes are closed, and he's not sure if she's asleep, but she draws in a shuddering breath and opens them. "Thank you," she whispers.

Charlie doesn't know if she should be grateful.

* * *

She watches him closely as he exits the house, the blanket still hugged to her body. He shoots her a tiny wave with half his hand, and she raises hers in acknowledgement. He opens the door to his car and is about to duck inside when she calls for him to wait. He freezes and looks back to her.

She hesitates before she speaks. "…Do you want to come over for dinner on Sunday? 6:30?"

Charlie hasn't been invited to dinner at someone's house in three years. "…I'll bring dessert."

Emily's face relaxes into a smile. She stays on her porch as he drives away, and he tries not to cry again.

* * *

Fiona just about attacks him when he walks inside.

"What the _fuck_?!" she rages at him. "Where have you been?! Where in the actual hell have you been?!" A pillow slams into his face and he staggers backwards.

"I had to go out," he tries to say vaguely, because his experience is too precious to share with anyone, but she's having none of it.

"No warning," she rages at him. "You disappeared, and I thought you did something—I thought you did something stupid. I thought— _fuck_ , Charlie!" She throws a pillow at his chest and her face is red and he's suddenly stricken by his ingratitude.

"I—I had to go talk to Emily," he says.

"Emily who?"

"B…Burke."

Fiona freezes, her hand mid-pillow swing. She gauges him, as if waiting for an indication of his current mood—good or bad, sane or no. But his heart feels six thousand pounds lighter and Emily doesn't blame him and no one blames him so he shouldn't blame him—and eventually, maybe he won't. And apparently that's reflected in his face, because Fiona asks, "…How are you feeling?"

And the only thing he says is, "Really…good."

* * *

They watch a cheesy B-movie that night, wrapped up in blankets on that shitty couch and eating macaroni and cheese. Charlie's asleep before the opening credits roll to a stop.

He doesn't wake up once.


End file.
